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Mens Monologues

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Mens Monologues MEN’ MONOLOGUES: Wasted Talent by Joseph Arnone Donnie: He stopped believing, that’s it, that’s why he failed...he quit. So much talent, so much potential but he stopped believing in himself...he lost his way cause he couldn’t figure out what to do next with his career and I guess all the stress added up and finally broke him...his music was great...I would listen to it all the time...it would get me into a pumped up emotional state and his lyrics never got old...no one gave him a chance but I think that in today’s world that doesn’t matter; he didn’t give himself the chance to take control of his career the way I knew he could have. Maybe it was fear from doubting himself and it crippled his ambition. He did it for so long with no financial gain, no recognition for his genius and he couldn’t do it no more...he gave up and that’s why he hung himself in his studio; he couldn’t do it anymore. It pains me because I believed in the guy more than he believed in himself. He forgot the number one lesson which is to do what you love for the sake of the journey...nothing is more rewarding than that. He lost sight of that. He forgot what it’s all about. It’s not about money or fame or compliments...it’s about expressing yourself creatively because it’s what your soul needs to do and enjoying the process. He lost track of that enjoyment and instead found himself caught up with what most people get stuck on... I wish I somehow knew how deep he’d fell off in his belief cause I— (pause.) I will miss him very much, he was a dear friend and a talented artist and the world has been robbed of his contribution to humanity. It hurts. It’s sad. It didn’t have to happen this way. GLASS MENAGERIE JIM You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is? That’s what they call it when someone low‐rates himself! I understand it because I had it, too. Although my case was not so aggravated as yours seems to be. I had it until I took up public speaking, developed my voice, and learned that I had an aptitude for science. Before that time I never thought of myself as being outstanding in any way whatsoever! Now I’ve never made a regular study of it, but I have a friend who says I can analyse people better than doctors that make a profession of it. I don’t claim that to be necessarily true, but I can sure guess a person’s psychology, Laura! [Takes out his gum] Excuse me, Laura. I always take it out when the flavour is gone. I’ll use this scrap of paper to wrap it in. I know how it is to get it stuck on a shoe. Yep – that’s what I judge to be your principal trouble. A lack of amount of faith in yourself as a person. You don’t have the proper amount of faith in yourself. I’m basing that fact on a number of your remarks and also on certain observations I’ve made. For instance that clumping you thought was so awful in high school. You say that you even dreaded to walk into class. You see what you did? You dropped out of school, you gave up an education because of a clump, which as far as I know was practically non‐existent! A little physical defect is what you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified thousands of times by imagination! You know what my strong advice to you is? Think of yourself as superior in some way! GLASS MENAGERIE TOM I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoebox. I left Saint Louis. I descended the step of this fire‐ escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space – I travelled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly coloured but torn away from the branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of coloured glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colours, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes ... Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out! The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Tom: What do you think I’m at? Aren’t I supposed to have any patience to reach the end of, Mother? You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that celotex interior? With flourescent tubes? Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains than go back mornings. But I go. For sixty five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self- self’s all I ever think of. Why listen, if self is what I thought of Mother, I’d be where he is, GONE! I’m going to the movies! I’m going to opium dens, yes, opium dens, Mother. I’ve joined the Hogan Gang, I’m a hired assassin, I carry a tommy gun in a violin case. I run a string of cat houses in the Valley. They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield. I’m leading a double life: a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night, a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother. On occasion they call me El Diablo. Oh I could tell you many things to make you sleepless. My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They’re going to blow us all sky high some night. I’ll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentleman callers. You ugly, babbling old witch.... SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (Chance tells his story of how he left home to become an actor. There are three separate selections here, though theyʼre all continuous in the play) CHANCE WAYNE Here is the town I was born in, and lived in till ten years ago, in St. Cloud. I was a twelve‐pound baby, normal and healthy, but with some kind of quantity ʻXʼ in my blood, a wish or a need to be different.... the kids that I grew up with are mostly still here and what they call ʻsettled down,ʼ gone into business, married and bringing up children, the little crowd I was in with, that I used to be the start of, was the snobset, the ones with the big names and money. I didnʼt have either... the others are all now members of the young social set here. The girls are young matrons, bridge‐players, and the boys belong to the Junior Chamber of Commerce and some of them, clubs in New Orleans such as Rex and Comus and ride on the Mardi Gras floats. Wonderful? No, boring... I wanted, expected, intended to get, something better... Yes, and I did, I got it. I did things that fat‐headed gang never dreamed of. Hell when they were still freshmen at Tulane or LSU or Ole Miss, I sang in the chorus of the biggest show in New York, in “Oklahoma,” and had pictures in LIFE in a cowboy outfit, tossinʼ a ten‐gallon hat in the air! YIP... EEEEEE! CHANCE WAYNE I was about to be sucked into the Army so I went into the Navy, because a sailorʼs uniform suited me better, the uniform was all that suited me, though. I kept thinking, this stops everything. I was twenty‐ three, that was the peak of my youth and I knew my youth wouldnʼt last long. By the time I got out, Christ knows, I might be nearly thirty! Who would remember Chance Wayne? In a life like mine, you just canʼt stop, you know, canʼt take time out between steps, youʼve got the keep going right on up from one thing to the other, once you drop out, it leaves you and goes on without you and youʼre washed up. ... And so I ran my comb through my hair one morning and noticed that eight or ten hairs had come out, a warning signal of a future baldness. My hair was still thick. But would it be five years from now, or even three? When the war would be over, that scared me, that speculation. I started to have bad dreams. Nightmares, and cold sweats at night, and I had palpitations, and on my leaves I got drunk and woke up in strange places with faces on the next pillow Iʼd never seen before.
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